• Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011, 627 pages, $35.00.

I found it both interesting and ironic that news of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs’ death in October coincided with the surge of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

As protesters were using laptops and smart phones to help promote their anti-capitalism message, I couldn’t help but wonder where they would be without one of the most visible members of the evil 1 percent.

Protesters might be surprised to learn, as I did, that although Jobs was an unapologetic capitalist, he was, if anything, apolitical. When reading Walter Isaacson’s biography Steve Jobs, it struck me that government largely was absent from the narrative.

The political figure who makes a lengthy appearance in the book is, not surprisingly, President Obama. Though Jobs offered to help Obama with his 2012 re-election campaign, he also told the president that “you’re heading for a one-term presidency” unless his administration became more business-friendly. These are hardly liberal talking points.

Ultimately, Jobs grew frustrated with Obama. “The president is very smart,” Jobs recalled, “but he kept explaining to us reasons why things can’t get done. It infuriates me.” Hence the eternal conflict between government and the free market.

Isaacson, also the author of biographies of Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin, has provided a readable 622-page book. If you’re not up on computer technology, never fear. While there is a fair amount of talk of operating systems and interfaces, the book is a focused examination on the complex man who changed the way we work, communicate and entertain ourselves. In other words, the way we live.

Was Jobs smarter than everyone else? “No, not exceptionally,” Isaacson writes. “Instead, he was a genius. His imaginative steps were instinctive, unexpected, and at times magical.”

Whatever it was, Jobs’ adoptive parents sensed early on there was something special about their son, and made sacrifices to indulge his intelligence. And thirst for knowledge.

That said, young Jobs didn’t excel all the time. While in public school, the somewhat geeky kid preferred tinkering with electronics to extracurricular activities. After he began indulging in marijuana and LSD, he ingratiated himself with Northern California’s hippie culture by throwing elaborate music and light shows.

His hookup with fellow electronics geek Steve Wozniak would prove to be, shall we say, fruitful. They fed off each other’s interest in electronics and practical jokes. The biggest prank of all was the “Blue Box,” a contraption that could replicate the long-distance dial tone, allowing them to call anywhere in the world toll free.

It was Wozniak who came up with the “enduring idea” of a keyboard, screen and computer in one integrated package. Enthused by Wozniak’s new creation, Jobs convinced him they could sell it and make a nice profit. Thus was born Apple — a tribute to Jobs’ days working at an orchard.

Ironically, the Northern California hippie culture initially regarded the personal computer as an Orwellian tool for mind control.

But Jobs saw it differently — the computer could be tool of freedom. Indeed, crushing Orwellian society was the theme for the famous “1984” Super Bowl ad introducing the Macintosh.

Consumers evidently agreed, and by 1980 Apple was valued at $1.9 billion. Jobs himself was worth $256 million by the age of 25, just a few years removed from years walking barefoot to Portland’s Hare Krishna temple for a free vegetarian meal. (Despite his wealth, Jobs would continue to forego footwear as much as possible, again prompting complaints from co-workers about his dirty feet.)

In a way, it all seemed like a happy accident. But such wealth is rarely an accident, and this where Isaacson explores the force of Jobs’ personality. Never afraid of the awkward silence, Jobs mastered the unblinking stare that would serve him well in breaking down the strongest wills.

Needless to say, his business relationships were complicated. More than anything else, his stormy relationship with former Pepsi executive John Sculley, whom Jobs recruited in the ‘80s to help launch the Macintosh, served as an illustration of what Isaacson describes as Jobs’ “binary view of the view of the world.” One day, a product, idea, or personality was the greatest thing in the world; the next day it was total crap.

Jobs constantly manipulated Sculley. This backfired, and Apple board members, tired of Jobs’ borderline bipolar behavior, ousted him from the company he helped create.

Then there was his rivalry with Bill Gates. Although Jobs and Gates were opposites in almost every way, Apple and Microsoft should have been a match made in heaven. Apple had the revolutionary hardware; Microsoft had the revolutionary software. But it was Jobs, the former hippie, who insisted on an integrated system over which he had total control, while the more buttoned-down Gates insisted that his software be available to all computer manufacturers on the free market. The two geniuses would do battle until they made a pact once Jobs returned to Apple in 1996.

Though Jobs authorized the biography — handpicking Isaacson to write it — he exercised no control over it and did not ask to review it. He encouraged people from his past to speak with Isaacson and encouraged them to be forthcoming.

To say that Jobs was a complicated human being is an understatement. Most great men are very complicated, and good biographers can peel back the many layers. Isaacson succeeds in showing us that practically nothing and nobody is the way it seems. That’s a lesson the Occupy Wall Street crowd could stand to learn.